I should worry about my brain. The idea for this posting came while I was just chopping up the ice jam at the end of my driveway. Nothing, I repeat, nothing about chopping ice has anything to do with words, but as I was whacking away at the ice with the chopping blade - which, by the way, was quite therapeutic - the word "caterwauling" popped into my head and would not leave. Then my mind-thread went from the appearance of the word to the funny sound of the word to onomonopoteia (which means a word that sounds like its meaning). Then I thought about all of the syllables in the word which then lead me to think about other words with multiple syllables. This all while chopping ice and heaving the chunks into the snow in the yard.
Have you noticed that words with lots of syllables are not only harder to pronounce but often have meanings that are not common? Perhaps our DNA has programmed us to learn the definitions to shorter words more easily than longer, more "complicated" words. For instance, take the choir that I direct. This group sight-reads fairly proficiently, a skill that they can be proud of. At our last rehearsal, they read through two new selections for the first time - sightreading. They were just buzzing right along until they came to the word propitiation in the text. Not only was this relatively seldom-heard word in print, but the composer had chosen to assign each syllable a different part of a rhythmic pattern AND note. By the time we breezed through that section of music, everyone had stopped singing because they were laughing so hard. Propitiation is a word I've long been familiar with but never had the occasion to fully comprehend the meaning, other than garnering a meaning through context. Synonyms for propitiation that are more commonly known are appeasement, atonement, concilation and reconciliation.
Caterwauling, the word that started this whole posting topic, is a word you hear fairly seldom. When I was a kid, I had a friend whose mother wasn't really very nice to her and the mother berated my friend on a regular basis, which caused my friend to cry a lot, which caused the mother to chide her daughter constantly by telling my friend that she should stop her caterwauling. I think caterwauling is a good example of onomonopoteia.
There. My linguistic urges are over for the moment........and all because I chopped up the ice at the end of my driveway.
Ancora imparo
